The Carnival at Bray

by Jessie Ann Foley

  “S-sorry,” Maggie stuttered, fumbling back toward her shower stall, but they just turned and smiled at her.

  “Hello,” one of them said. She turned back to the fog-glazed mirror and dabbed some makeup across her eyelids.

  “Hi.” Maggie pulled her towel closer and stepped shyly to the vacant sink between them. She ran her toothbrush under the water. She’d never been in the presence of such bold, unselfconscious nudity. She’d thought Ashley had been the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen in real life, but these women were practically otherworldly. They were tall and large breasted, with lean muscles coursing beneath their pink skin and rich thatches of pale pubic hair. Each woman had long blond hair combed seal-slick down her back. Their eyes were an ice-gray color Maggie had only seen at the bottom of pools. She did not know it was possible to have eyes that color.

  But what was most fascinating about them—what she really couldn’t believe—was the tattoos. Maggie always thought that tattoos were for sailors, like the faded anchor on the inside of her years-dead Grandpa Lynch’s forearm. She had never seen one on a woman, let alone a woman this spectacularly beautiful. The one to her left leaned toward the mirror and applied eyeliner in studied, precise strokes, and her plank-thin back, with its perfect shoulder blades, displayed a huge tattoo of a naked female figure, hands splayed, with intricately feathered angel wings that spread in pale red ink all the way to the tops of the woman’s shoulders. Why does that look so familiar? Maggie combed her lemon-scented hair and tried not to stare. Suddenly she realized: it was the same image that adorned the cover of the Nirvana album In Utero.

  The woman caught her eye in the mirror and said, in perfect and beautifully accented English, “Toothpaste?”

  “Oh—sure!” Maggie unclutched her towel to fumble with her travel tube of Colgate. She handed the woman the toothpaste just as her towel dropped in a pool around her ankles. Her cheeks flaming, she reached down to grab it. But then she stopped. I may not look like these women, but I’m no little girl. She kicked her towel aside, straightened her bare shoulders, and continued to comb her hair.

  “I like your tattoo.” She smiled at the woman in the mirror, resisting the urge to cover her own untattooed skin.

  “Thank you!” the woman said, absently reaching back and grazing the tattoo with long fingers. “It’s still a bit sore—I only got it finished last week.”

  “That’s from the In Utero cover, isn’t it?”

  “Yes! Is everyone in America as in love with Kurt Cobain as we are in Norway?”

  “Pretty much,” Maggie laughed.

  “I have waited years for this,” sighed the other woman. She held out a long arm for Maggie to inspect. A fragment of lyrics was tattooed across the soft whiteness of her forearm: I’m not like them / but I can pretend …

  This confirmed it: these were the coolest women alive.

  “Are you in Rome for the show?”

  “Yeah, I’m here with my boyfriend,” Maggie said. “My uncle got us the tickets.”

  “Well, you must have a very cool uncle.”

  “The coolest,” Maggie smiled, rummaging through her bag for her mascara. For a second, she forgot completely that Kevin was dead.

  “The whole city is full of Nirvana fans,” the woman to her left said. “It’s incredible.”

  And it was. Here I am, Maggie thought, in Rome, combing my hair next to two Norwegian models with Nirvana tattoos. Meanwhile, downstairs, a handsome boy—a boy she’d called her boyfriend and it hadn’t felt like a lie—waited for her at a bar that had once been a nun’s infirmary. This time last year, she’d been a high school freshman, lonely and bored, sitting through Mr. Blackwell’s English class and reading Our Town in her pleated school skirt, staring out the window at the gray Chicago winter, a winter as drab and endless as her adolescence.

  “See you at the show!” the Norwegian girls waved, covering themselves with minuscule towels and heading out to the convent hallway.

  In the empty bathroom, Maggie put on her makeup and her tight black dress and dabbed her drugstore perfume on her neck and wrists. She zipped up her bag, dropped it off in room 19, and took the ancient elevator down to the main floor.

  Eoin sat at the bar counter in the shadow of a large potted plant. He was drinking a bottle of Italian beer. He’d changed out of his Saint Brendan’s uniform and put on a pair of jeans and a dark sweater. His close-cropped hair was neatly combed.

  “You look so handsome.” It was an old-fashioned thing to say, and far more straightforward than Maggie had intended. It had just come out of her, a remnant of the confidence high she was riding after her meeting with the Norwegians. But before she could qualify it with a friendly slap on the back or a careless laugh, Eoin swallowed the last of his beer and stood up.

  “And you look beautiful.”

  At the front desk, Eoin asked Marta to recommend a place for dinner. She circled a spot on their map—“a short walk, very romantic for newlyweds,” she explained—and the two of them walked hand in hand down Via Monserato until they found the restaurant by its hand-stenciled sign hanging from an arched stone doorway.

  The narrow room at the front of the restaurant was a butcher shop crammed with slabs of cured meat, some with the bristles still attached; barrels full of hooves; thick wheels of cheese behind refrigerated glass, and links of sausages hanging in chandeliered loops above the ceiling. The closest Maggie had ever come to such a place was the Mars Cheese Castle, off Highway 94 on the way to Milwaukee, which despite being not nearly as rustic as this place, had still always managed to fill her with horror and vows of vegetarianism. But here, as they followed the bowlegged butcher, with his stooped shoulders and bulbous, scarred knuckles, through the barrels of molding cheese and casks of fermenting wine, out into a covered courtyard with cool dark tiles and tiny lights crisscrossing the ceiling, the magic of Rome began to sink in. Maggie suddenly became aware of the power of her long, young legs, the short hem of her dress, even the flaky mascara that fringed the green eyes she’d inherited by her mother. Her heels clacked on the stone tile as she moved across the floor, and she felt not just Eoin’s eyes but the eyes of all the men in the restaurant watching. So this is what sexy feels like, she thought.

  The butcher handed them menus on stained paper. Maggie had more experience with Italian food than Eoin did, having gone to Taylor Street with her father in those lost early years when he still made the attempt to be a part of their lives. But even she could only recognize two items on the menu: ravioli and pizza. The butcher’s wife, a tiny woman with a large, fleshy nose and men’s brogues came over to take their order.

  “What’s the drinking age here?” Maggie asked Eoin.

  “What drinking age?” he laughed. “This is Europe, Maggie.” He pointed at the word vino. The old woman nodded pleasantly and brought them a carafe of red table wine. “See?”

  They clinked their glasses together.

  “To Uncle Kevin,” Eoin said.

  “To Uncle Kevin.” The wine was earthy and sweet, the color of rubies.

  The butcher’s wife came over with their pizza. It looked like anything Maggie had seen back in Chicago, but it was covered in shreds of deep green lettuce and curls of a pale purple meat that looked like it had been shaved off the sides of one of the big pig shanks hanging from the wood beams above them.

  “What is that?” Maggie pointed.

  “No idea.” Eoin picked up the largest slice of the pie and stuffed it in his mouth. “When in Rome,” he said through a mouthful of food.

  It was the best pizza Maggie had ever tasted. The meat was salty and flavorful, the crust charred and crispy, the cheese creamy and mellow. And when the ravioli came, pillowy noodles filled with ricotta and drizzled in melted butter and chopped sage, she and Eoin fell into a prolonged silence so they could give it their full attention.

  “This is the best feckin’ stuff I’ve had in my life,” Eoin mumbled, his mouth full.

  “This time tomorrow,”
Maggie said dreamily, “we’ll be standing in front of Kurt Cobain.”

  “Maggie, I have to warn you,” he said, forking the last piece of pasta onto his plate, “I’m not into this grunge stuff like you are. Remember, I grew up listening to my mother’s music and not much else.”

  “It doesn’t matter! Great music is great music, no matter if it’s Irish or country or grunge or whatever.” “I’m just sayin’, I might not like it.”

  “You don’t have to try to like it,” she told him. “You just have to stand there and listen. It will do all the work. It will get you, I promise. I’ve only been to one concert in my life, and it, like, blew me open.” She’d only had half a glass of the wine, but it was making her feel elastic, profound. “My uncle took me to see the Smashing Pumpkins at this place in Chicago called the Metro. I’ll take you there one day, maybe. Even if you don’t know much about the band, you’ll still love the show, I promise.”

  Perhaps the wine made him feel the same way, because he suddenly reached across the table and put a hand on hers.

  “I love this,” he said quietly. “All of this. The wine. The sage sauce. Italy. You. It’s all perfect.”

  Maggie blushed. “I love it, too.”

  Dessert was a simple pot of custard. It was cloud light and perfectly sweetened. Maggie was quickly realizing that the Italian food she’d eaten back on Taylor Street had really not been Italian food at all.

  They were stuffed to the point of sleepiness, but going back to the hotel was not an option. “We’re in Rome, for feck’s sake!” Eoin pulled out the map and began studying the crisscrossing lines. “We need to see the sights!”

  They followed the wide, crooked path of the Via Del Corso, where stylish Italian couples in tailored black coats and smart shoes headed to parties and restaurants, cupping cigarettes and carrying bottles of wine under their arms. The wind snapped their coats, but compared to Chicago in February, it felt like a spring wind, and drier than most Irish days, too. As they searched for the Via Frattria, noses in the folds of their map, the sound of running water cut through the honking horns and scooter motors and stopped them short.

  They were standing in front of the most magnificent fountain Maggie had ever seen. It was practically the size of half a city block. The water’s mist hung in rainbows on the dark air, and she could taste its stony moss on her lips, feel its coolness on her nose and cheeks. Marble figures of muscular gods and goddesses with upturned eyes seemed to dance in the fountain’s flow, and at the surface of the pools, lit up by soft blue floodlights, copper coins winked at the bottom like flashing treasures.

  “Trevi Fountain,” Eoin said. “I learned about this in art history class. You’re supposed to throw a coin in the water, and it means you’ll come back to Rome one day.”

  “You got any change?”

  He rummaged in his pocket, found a few coins, and together they tossed them. We will return to Rome one day, Maggie promised herself silently. She stood and watched their coins plash into the water and sink to the bottom, letting her mind fill with all her hopes for the years ahead, some old and familiar, some newly born to include the boy standing next to her. There was so much to hope for, in fact, that her heart hurt just thinking about all of it.

  Back in their sparse little hotel room, Eoin kissed her under the stacks of thin blankets. Maggie could feel the swell of him press against her thighs beneath his jeans. Outside their slatted window, a sleety rain pattered against the shutters.

  “Is this too much?” He kissed her neck.

  “No.”

  He moved his hands down her sweater, tracing the outline of her breasts, and skimmed his fingers over the sheer fabric of her tights. Her knees began to shake.

  “We should try to get some sleep, Eoin,” she whispered, because suddenly it all was too much—the foggy vineyards in Tuscany, the sage ravioli, the sweet wine, the rain at the window, and his fingers on her thighs; too much goodness and newness to take in over the course of one solitary day.

  She closed her knees together and his hands slipped away.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.” She curled into him and he put an arm around her waist. They fell asleep like that, still dressed in their dinner clothes, to the sound of the wind clattering the old wooden shutters.

  In the morning they found a nearby café that served cheap pastries and espresso in tiny ceramic cups. They sat near a window and watched the city come to life. The Norwegians had been right: Nirvana fever had descended on Rome. Gangs of young people milled around, the boys with stringy hair and slouchy flannels, and the girls in Docs and smudged purple eye makeup. There were mohawks and wallet chains and band T-shirts; pierced noses, black lipstick, bleached blondes, and baby doll dresses. Some people hid behind sunglasses, others shouted happily at strangers, still wobbly from the previous night’s debauchery. Everyone was smoking.

  After breakfast, they went to the church of Domine Quo Vadis and San Sebastian to get Dan Sean his vial of holy water. There they saw pilgrims approaching the imprints of the Lord’s feet on their knees, kissing the steps, crying into the dirt. Maggie thought of the monks on Iona, painting the pages of the Book of Kells with painstaking, loving strokes. She put a coin in the metal donation box, lit a votive candle, and genuflected. I wish you were here to see this, Kev, she prayed. The candles glowed red with all the tiny prayers of the faithful, filling the corner of the quiet chapel with filigreed, hopeful light.

  Back at the hotel, Maggie gave Eoin her Discman so he could listen to In Utero while they got ready for the show. He wore his usual attire: Liverpool hoodie and track pants. She loved that he was so stubbornly himself, and that he didn’t care about grunge or Nirvana. She loved that he was here not because he liked the band, but because it meant something to her. She went down the hall to shower and change, and when she came back to the room, dressed in her black dress and tights with Kevin’s flannel tied around her waist, she lay down on the bed next to him. As afternoon descended into evening, they sprawled there side by side, loosely holding hands, and listened to the rest of the album together.

  At Termini the atmosphere was feverish, festive. Buses were shuttling people out to the Palaghiaccio di Marino for five thousand lire a person. Maggie and Eoin waited in line and boarded the next one that came through where no one, not even the bus driver, was over the age of thirty. Someone had brought a portable boom box and was blasting “Lithium,” while people screamed along and snuck sips from the bottles of Peroni they’d smuggled in under their jackets. There were Italians, Greeks, Germans, and Spaniards. There were Albanians, Armenians, and Turks. People shouted to each other in unrecognizable languages but they all knew the lyrics of the songs. Maggie’s life, all that was familiar, had shrunk itself down to the dark-haired boy by her side. They grinned like fools when the Venetian strangers across the aisle tried to make conversation in broken, excited English. When the bus pulled into the massive parking lot and the Palaghiaccio di Marino appeared in a wash of lights, the bus erupted into cheers.

  They dissolved into the massive crowd, Eoin holding tightly to Maggie’s hand, and lined up at the entrance. Even the uniformed workers tearing tickets at the turnstiles looked excited. They followed the signs to their seats, zigzagging up and up and up the concrete ramps, past vendors selling beer and little bags of anise candy, until they reached the nosebleed level, stepped through the heavy velvet curtains, and were in the main auditorium. Their seats, so high they were nearly flush with the concrete back wall, were at the crest of a tidal wave of moving bodies, and at the far end of this ocean stood the stage.

  “Are you ready?”

  Eoin nodded, and the last thing Maggie saw before the lights went black was the liquid whites of his eyes. There was a momentary hush, and then the stage lit up and the Jumbotrons snapped on, displaying the shambling figure of Kurt Cobain, twenty feet high on the screen, and the hush exploded into the deafening chorus of five thousand screams. Ma
ggie’s hands fluttered involuntarily to her heart. She felt the way she imagined Dan Sean must feel at Lourdes, at Medjugorje, the way those pilgrims at the church of Domine Quo Vadis felt as they rubbed their fingers through the cool scoop of marble where Jesus Christ, they believed, had dug his heels. She could feel Kevin as a living presence by her side.

  The band opened with “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter.” In the dark, sweaty, cavernous hoard, among thousands of strangers who sang along in their accented English, who lit new cigarettes off the dying embers of old ones, Maggie felt weightless, floating away from all that limited her, her life growing louder and louder—more shaped, more possible—along with the music. She didn’t need drugs to find transcendence. She didn’t need beer or whiskey or wine. The music was enough. She jumped loosely to it, closing her eyes, opening them, wiping the sweat off her face with the cuff of Kevin’s flannel. She screamed and applauded until her voice went hoarse, and then kept screaming, even though all that came out was a joyous gurgling sound. During “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” she grinned over at Eoin, whose eyes shone in the steamy darkness, who had joined the impromptu mosh pit that was forming in their row and growing more and more aggressive, carnal, as the set went on. They were jostled and pushed, tripped and fell onto the sticky floor between the seats, and were lifted up by strangers’ hands. All the while, Kurt Cobain sang himself raw. Between songs, Cobain joked with the crowd, sneered a little at them, at himself, at everything. The Jumbotron was merciless on his pixelated face; he looked haggard, haunted, over it all. He was two days past his twenty-seventh birthday. The band played twenty-three songs before smashing their instruments, their energy peaking and coagulating, deafening, on and on until Maggie touched her wet ears to check for blood. It was only sweat. The lights burst on, and just as quickly as it had started, the band left the stage and it was over. She and Eoin crashed into a soaking hug. They had just witnessed something important. The anthem of our generation. The crowd, still trembling and half-deaf, coming down from their visions, their religious encounters, began to pour out of the theater, pushing, shoving, screaming in Italian, tossing half empty cups of warm beer.